Human resource management in the hotel business

Introduction

The current level of development of entrepreneurship in the field of tourism determines the need to organize the management of collective work. The effectiveness of a business organization requires knowledge of the laws governing the functioning of labor collectives and their use. Human resources are the main resource of every enterprise, the quality and efficiency of management of which largely determine the results of business activity and its competitiveness.

Entrepreneurship in the hotel business is “a set of principles, methods, means and forms of influencing the interests, behavior and activities of workers in order to maximize the use of their intellectual and physical capabilities when performing labor functions, ensuring the necessary proportions in the level of labor productivity and production volumes to maintain constant compliance of personnel preparedness and trainability with the requirements of scientific and technological progress” [5].

The relevance of effective personnel planning is determined by the need for well-trained employees with experience in the hospitality industry, as well as the high level of staff turnover. Therefore, recently, personnel planning has become as important in the process of enterprise management as the planning of other economic resources, and it should be considered as an integral part of strategic planning. Human resources planning, while related to the overall development of the company, must take into account changes in external factors such as demographic changes, changes in educational levels and the degree of competition, as well as the level of government intervention in the economy.

The personnel management system, including employees, employers and other owners of the enterprise, consists of establishing organizational, economic, socio-psychological and legal relations between the subject and the object of management. These relationships are based on the principles, methods and forms of influencing the interests, behavior and activities of the enterprise’s employees in order to maximize their use.

Organizational aspects of managing a hotel business enterprise

Organizational aspects of personnel management are based on the following assumptions: the need for a close connection between personnel planning and the development strategy of the organization (company); quantitative assessment of the costs of working with personnel and their impact on the economic indicators of production.

To implement the service process in a hotel, a minimum set of the following basic services must be provided to ensure the provision of basic hotel services: room management service; administrative service; catering services; commercial service; Maintenance; auxiliary and additional services.

The administrative service for the effective management of people is becoming the most important function of personnel management. In the hotel business, the tasks of human resources services of hotel enterprises include solving the following issues: selection and hiring of personnel; training and retraining of personnel; regulation of labor relations; personnel planning; wages and working conditions. In the hotel business, these functions are divided between two or more employees. These may include HR, training, recruiting, labor relations and payroll specialists.

In the hotel business, the effectiveness of the business activities of the tourism industry largely depends on its personnel and the relationships between them, which from an organizational point of view depends on:

- setting clear goals and objectives of the company;

- development of an effective organizational structure;

- personnel planning, with the help of which personnel selection and personnel policies are carried out [1; 9].

The organization of personnel planning consists of four main stages, where the main thing is the coincidence of supply and demand:

1. analysis of current personnel;

2. assessment of expected changes in staffing in the planned period of time;

3. forecast of personnel requirements in the planning period;

4. taking measures to ensure the availability of the necessary personnel at the right time (matching supply and demand) [3; 6].

Accordingly, workforce planning is a very important and complex activity for the hospitality industry due to its sensitivity to changes in the external environment as well as changes in consumer tastes.

Assessing the efficiency of the hotel business

An effective business system for the hotel industry should be based on management methods, which are understood as ways of influencing teams or individual employees in order to coordinate their activities in the process of work to achieve the effect of the organization’s goals.

In this regard, to adequately assess the effectiveness of organizational management in the hotel business, the following conditions must be met:

• having a clear understanding of the ultimate goal;

• have a clear understanding of the resources needed to optimally achieve this goal;

• the presence of clear criteria for assessing effectiveness.

Since, as already mentioned, the management process cannot be completely reduced to a quantitative description, two aspects of performance assessment can be distinguished: objective and subjective.

The effectiveness of entrepreneurship is expressed through the effectiveness of the organization's activities and the effectiveness of management decisions. The other side of entrepreneurial effectiveness is expressed in the perception of the manager, subordinates and other stakeholders of the effectiveness of efforts to achieve goals and solve problems.

An important characteristic of entrepreneurial effectiveness is job satisfaction. Satisfaction is understood as the evaluative attitude of the employee and the team as a whole towards the content and various aspects of work activity. The following factors influence the level of job satisfaction:

1. general characteristics of work activity (severity, regime, working conditions, wage level, etc.);

2. the employee’s perception of his work activity. Different people have different requirements for the same aspects of activity. In the most general form, attitude towards work can be considered at three levels: attitude towards work in general, attitude towards a specific profession, field of activity and attitude towards a specific workplace;

3. the degree of compliance of the employee’s qualifications and education with the requirements of the place of work. If the requirements are higher, it creates complexity and increases the burden of work. Otherwise, the work becomes monotonous and uninteresting, although there may be elements of ease in completing tasks;

4. duration of labor. On the one hand, over time, the employee adapts to the type of activity performed, gaining experience and skills. Consequently, satisfaction increases. On the other hand, the duration of work can reduce satisfaction, since the content is exhausted and elements of novelty disappear;

5. social-comparative factor, when an employee compares his position (including remuneration received and effort expended) with the position of other employees;

6. level of expectations, etc. Obviously, the subjective perception of effectiveness can be an addition to the overall assessment of management, but objective criteria must play a decisive role.

Currently, three groups of labor resource management methods have been discovered and applied in practice in the scientific literature: administrative (organizational or organizational-administrative), economic and socio-psychological (Table 1).

Table-1.

Methods of managing organizational human resources [2]

One of the main methods of human resource management is administrative, which is based on the principle of unity of command, discipline and responsibility. Consequently, they believe that all activities of the organization are based on the strict subordination of workers and on their unquestioning compliance with instructions, often based on coercion.

Administrative methods of labor resource management have a direct direct impact on the managed object (any normative and administrative act is subject to mandatory execution) through orders, instructions, operational instructions given in written or oral form, control over their implementation, a system of administrative means of compliance with labor discipline. They are necessary to maintain labor discipline and provide the organizational clarity necessary for staff to work effectively. Within the organization, relations between managers and their subordinates are regulated by the Labor Code.

Administrative methods are implemented in the form of organizational and administrative influence. Organizational impact is based on the operation of approved internal regulations governing the activities of personnel. These include: the organization's charter, organizational structure and staffing table, regulations on divisions, collective agreement, job descriptions, internal regulations. Managerial influences include: orders, instructions, orders, instructions, labor regulation, coordination of work and control of execution [3].

No less in demand in the modern world are economic methods that involve influencing processes and phenomena through the interests of workers and work teams in order to achieve the best productivity at the lowest cost.

Economic methods of personnel management are elements of the economic mechanism that ensures the progressive development of the organization. The most important economic methods of personnel management are technical and economic planning, economic incentives, and bank lending.

A significant role in human resource management is given to socio-psychological methods of influence. In order to effectively influence a team, it is necessary to know the moral and psychological characteristics of individual performers, the socio-psychological characteristics of individual groups and teams, and also to carry out control influence.

Socio-psychological methods of labor resource management involve the study of socio-psychological working conditions in production teams, their influence on the state of the individual, and through it - on the results of production activities. These methods are based on the laws of sociology and psychology.

The most effective human resource management activities can be achieved only with the integrated use of management methods. Using a system of these methods allows you to look at the object of improvement from all sides, which helps to avoid miscalculations in the organization’s activities. The organizational and managerial structure of the hotel business is presented in the following figure (1.)

Figure-1. Organizational structure of management

hotel staff [6]

The staff managed by the organization includes porter, maid and ancillary services.

However, it should be noted that most companies are still at the stage of searching for ways to improve their human resource management system. In accordance with the point of view of G.Kh. Arslanova, personnel management assessment is carried out to assess the employee’s suitability for the vacant position, which is carried out according to three indicators:

First, by definition: assessing employee potential. When working in a vacant workplace, it is important to establish the professional skills, knowledge, work experience, business qualities of the applicant, his professional qualities and characteristics of his worldview.

Secondly, it is an assessment of individual contribution. Using specially developed methods, it is possible to establish the quality, complexity and productivity of a particular employee’s work, which helps to draw a conclusion about his position.

Thirdly, by definition, personnel certification. This method is a kind of comprehensive assessment that takes into account both the applicant’s potential business opportunities and real opportunities, as well as his real contribution to the final result [1].

Let's consider the qualification requirements for the modern hotel business depending on the recommended position: higher and secondary education of a manager, knowledge of a foreign language, experience in the hotel industry and age not older than 35 years.

So, analysis of the requirements for the competence of future hotel employees is one of the important factors in assessing the efficiency and quality of work of hotel business personnel and drawing conclusions and recommendations based on it.

Based on an analysis of the structure of the hotel workforce, organized by the human resources department, an assessment of the qualifications of each person is carried out, which is usually systematized according to the following requirements: highly qualified employee; qualified employee; employees with additional skills and higher education; unqualified employees.

Let's look at their competencies and qualifications:

• highly qualified employees are employees who graduated from a university or special educational institution with a training period of 2–4 years;

• qualified workers are workers who have specialized secondary education (educational institutions, technical schools) or have completed industrial training at enterprises for 6-24 months;

• employees with additional higher specialized education are employees with a second higher education as a manager;

• low-skilled workers are workers who have undergone on-the-job training for 2 to 5 months;

• unskilled workers – workers who have been trained on the job for several weeks.

It follows that the initial stage of human resource management is the selection and formation of personnel. The selection of labor resources from internal forms of labor selection largely depends on the personnel selection policy of the company's management. The use of workforce rationalization often eliminates the need for a new selection of labor resources.

And yet, if there is a shortage of labor resources at the required level, it is necessary to place applicants for vacant positions, promoting labor resources up the career ladder. Application of a method of informing the entire hotel workforce about vacancies by sending out newsletters, posting advertisements, etc.

In the practical activities of the hotel business, the process of selecting labor resources requires the use of recruitment agencies, making it extremely important to identify elements of personnel management technology.

Table-2.

Elements of personnel management technology [7; 9].

The personnel planning policy identifies trends in the development of the workforce at the enterprise, i.e. in the personnel service, which allows you to quickly establish quantitative and qualitative requirements for the workforce. During planning (determining labor requirements), several factors must be taken into account; consider the following table.

Table-3.

Factors in determining staffing needs

Analysis of the table allows us to note that the factors for determining the need for personnel include preference for the purposes of selecting the hotel workforce, collecting and systematizing data on future employees for vacant positions, as well as qualitative analysis, assessment of the essence of forecasting (time, quantity).

Employment resources for an applicant for a vacant position in a hotel can be internal and external.

The essence of the internal resource (transfer from one specialty to another): the administration has real information about all the strengths and weaknesses of the labor resource in the process of reducing the cost of hiring the workforce. There are also disadvantages: a peculiar threat of accumulation of complex personal relationships in the team, not the best attitude towards a person on the part of former colleagues.

The essence of an external resource (personnel coming from employment agencies): the selection of a large number of applicants to the workforce, the possibility of new ideas emerging in the work. The negative side is the long period of adaptation of the workforce, unreliable personal characteristics of applicants.

The company's administration must take into account the positive and negative possibilities and make decisions about use depending on the forecasts of the research data. During the selection process, applicants are selected based on objective information requirements (lack of experience, knowledge, education), declared experience. At the same time, practical experience in the hotel business plays a significant role in the hotel business, since staff constantly have to deal with clients of the tourism business and constantly with hotel guests.

The next stage of the personnel management system is its adaptation, orientation and adaptation to the conditions of the team and work. During the adaptation process, the administration applies all the factors (subtleties) of the new person’s work. All rules, regulations, benefits for him, as well as incentives for the work activity of personnel are taken into account [10].

Thus, it should be noted that the stage of adaptation and career guidance in a hotel implies a set of activities that are collectively interconnected economically, socially and psychologically and are aimed at developing the professional experience of each hotel employee individually.

Summarizing the results of the study, as well as with the aim of developing recommendations for improving the management system in the hotel business, it should be noted that the problems of personnel management in all hotel enterprises arise from the management style.

Another problem of the hotel business is the claims and complaints of hotel guests; based on the study of complaints and suggestions, it is possible to determine the possibilities of eliminating them. According to T.A. Dzhum and N.I. Denisova, among the reasons for customer dissatisfaction in the hotel business, a significant place is occupied by: insufficient attention to the client (there were cases when employees were busy with their mobile phones at work); failure to listen and not try to solve the problem yourself when a hotel guest contacts you (kick or shift the problem to another employee).

Figure-2. Frequently repeated causes of dissatisfaction

hotel clients [4; 7].

Based on the analysis of hotel customer complaints, it is possible to identify areas and areas of activity where employees lack qualifications and skills. Let's consider the important standards of requirements for hotel business employees, who regularly manifest themselves in the form of problems (complaints and recommendations) in the form of a lack of qualifications and skills:

• skills of restraint, patience, the ability to avoid conflict situations, good manners and culture of speech, the ability to control oneself, readiness to quickly respond to comments from a hotel client;

• skills of stress resistance, politeness, goodwill, calmness, politeness and cordiality;

In the hospitality industry, solving a problem requires not getting into arguments with the client. It should be borne in mind that foreign guests not only get acquainted with the culture of the country, but also become a living advertisement for other potential clients, informing them about the living conditions in this hotel. Ultimately, the feedback from foreign guests affects the image of the entire state and, especially, the development of the hotel business in general, as well as the development of international tourism in the country as a whole.

From the point of view of E.Yu. Nikolskaya and L.V. Semenov [6], in the hotel business, requirements not only to the professional, but also to the personal qualities of the enterprise’s personnel play an important role. Therefore, the authors systematize hotel services into two levels:

1) services that are in close contact with the client;

2) services whose employees rarely come into contact with the client.

At the same time, of course, the service has its own specific requirements for each employee of the hotel business.

Let's take a closer look at the requirements for the first level of services. And so, in order to get into the first level service sector, it is necessary that the employee meets the following requirements.

Table-4.

Personal requirements for the first level of hotel service

It should also be noted that in addition to the noted personal requirements, for an employee to enter the first group of the hotel services sector, it is necessary to have special education and work experience in this field. In order to establish the potential of an applicant for a certain position, a special form of testing is used.

Conclusion

The entrepreneurial activity of an organization is unthinkable without a high-quality personnel policy that determines specific actions for managing labor resources. In accordance with the study, we have identified recommendations for the main areas of improving human resource management:

1. Resource planning - developing a plan to meet future human resource needs.

2. Recruiting – creating a reserve of potential candidates for all positions.

3. Selection – assessment of candidates for positions and selection of the best from the reserve created during hiring.

4. Determining wages and benefits - developing wage and benefit structures to attract, recruit and retain employees.

5. Career guidance and adaptation - the introduction of hired workers into the organization and its divisions, the development among employees of an understanding of what the organization expects from it and what kind of work in it receives a well-deserved assessment.

6. Training - developing programs to teach the job skills necessary to perform the job effectively.

7. Assessment of work activity - development of methods for assessing work activity and bringing it to the attention of the employee.

8. Promotion, demotion, transfer, dismissal - developing ways to move employees to positions with more or less responsibility, developing their professional experience by moving to other positions or areas of work, as well as procedures for terminating an employment contract.

9. Training of management personnel, promotion of management personnel - development of programs aimed at developing abilities and increasing the efficiency of management personnel.

Thus, in addition to professionalism in the hotel business, the principle of attentive attitude towards hotel guests is necessary. It is important not only to be able to correctly and effectively build relationships in everyday communication, but also in work. At the same time, such qualities as sociability, endurance, a high level of culture, accuracy, neatness, charm, and good diction are important here. It is also very important to know foreign languages.

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